Breaking Up is Easy
by susieboo
Summary: It was an until-now unspoken truth that Catra and Adora had broken up. It was hard to date someone who was trying to drag you back to the Horde to be mind-wiped. Or someone who had ditched you for a group of complete strangers within twenty-four hours of knowing them. The part where it got fuzzy for them both was... when? [Oneshot. Catradora. Or past Catradora. They were a thing


It wasn't exactly a secret that Catra wasn't great at the whole "emotions" thing. (Exhibit A: literally everything that had gone down since Adora defected.) So maybe that was why, whenever she heard her fellow soldiers bemoan their various romantic woes, she lacked sympathy. Especially when Lonnie had gone through a breakup a couple years ago.

"Everyone's like_ 'ooooooh, breakups, ooooh, so complicated,'_" she'd complained to Adora one evening. "Seriously? It's just one person getting sick of the other and saying, _'We're done here.'_ Boom. Done. Breakup over. Not saying it sounds fun, but how is _that_ complicated?"

Adora had laughed, pressing a kiss to her cheek. "Maybe it's because you've never gone through one yourself."

"Neither have you."

"Well, let's try and never find out, okay?"

Catra had smiled, and nodded. This was one of the only times she and Adora had really discussed the state of their relationship. They knew Shadow Weaver and the other higher-ups likely wouldn't approve, so they'd mutually agreed to keep it quiet. Catra didn't really mind; she sort of liked it. It was fun, having a secret. But they'd never really talked about whether or not their relationship could be permanent. Marriage was almost certainly off the table - at least as long as Shadow Weaver was alive - and then Catra had wanted to go throw herself off a cliff for even _thinking_ of marriage.

Seriously, who was she - Kyle?

But that was a long time ago. Now, Adora was... well, for starters, she was freaking She-Ra. And fighting for the other side. She'd abandoned _everything_ important. The Horde. Shadow Weaver. Catra.

And for what? A cool sword and some new saccharine BFFs?

One thing Catra and Adora still had in common was a distaste for neutral zones. Neutral zones meant they had to co-exist in the same room without fighting. And it seemed like fighting was all they could do nowadays.

(Fighting, Adora told herself, wasn't something she _enjoyed_. It was just something that had to be done.)

(Catra, meanwhile, told herself that she'd rather fight with Adora than not see her at all.)

But "social experiments," as the newest member of Catra's team called them, were pretty much always neutral zones. And like most "social experiments," Adora looked like she wanted to find the nearest hole and crawl into it. Catra smirked to herself when she saw Adora standing with her back against the wall, hanging back while the other two - Glimmer and something-with-a-B (Brick? Bojangles?) - socialized and had a good time.

When Adora sank to sit on the floor, looking much more like a frazzled seventeen-year-old than the great, almighty She-Ra, Catra decided to alleviate her boredom in the best way she knew how: harass Adora.

"Hey, Adora," she said, sitting down next to her.

"You are so lucky we're in a neutral zone," Adora replied, not looking at her.

"Ouch! What's your problem?"

"Yeah, sorry, I'm usually really eager to hang out at a party with my ex-girlfriend."

"Yeah, well-"

Catra stopped short when she regsitered what Adora had actually said. It was an until-now unspoken truth that they had broken up. It was hard to date someone who was trying to drag you back to the Horde to be mind-wiped. Or someone who had ditched you for a group of complete strangers within twenty-four hours of knowing them.

The part where it got fuzzy for them both was... when? It wasn't like they'd been able to sit down and have the actual discussion.

"What's wrong?" Adora asked after a minute. "You're not usually this quiet."

"It's nothing," she snapped. "Just... I guess hearing you call me your ex is weirder than I thought it would be."

"...Yeah. I get that." Adora sighed, leaning her head back and closing her eyes. "You know, there was a period when I wasn't even sure if we were broken up or not? Like, we couldn't even do _that_ properly."

Catra snorted in spite of herself. "Yeah. I had that too."

"So when was it for you? When we broke up."

Catra fortunately had enough self-control to not say the first thing that came to mind - that they'd broken up the second Adora chose the Rebellion over her. No matter how much it felt like it, she knew that wasn't strictly true. If Adora had come to her senses and come back at any point in the first few days - okay, the first few weeks - Catra would've welcomed her back, no hesitation.

Even though she realized pretty early on that that just wouldn't happen.

Finally, she replied, "When I gave you the sword back. Maybe a little earlier, when you came to get Glimmer. When you sacrificed yourself for her, no hesitation - something you never would've done for me-"

"Catra, that's not tr-"

"When I realized, you being gone was for the best. You made your choice, and I made mine - I made the right one. You held me back. It just took me awhile to accept it."

"_Wow_."

To Catra's surprise, Adora was laughing. It wasn't a happy sound. It was fragile, biting. It certainly wasn't a sound that Catra had ever thought she'd hear come out of _Adora_, of all people.

"You called it quits a lot sooner than I thought you did," Adora finally said.

"Okay, I'll bite - when did _you_ think we broke up?" Catra asked.

Adora turned her head to look her in the eye, then.

"When you left me, hanging from a cliff, and just walked away. That's when I decided-well, _realized_ we were through."

Catra tore her gaze away, feeling like her heart had jumped up into her throat and decided to stay there awhile. No matter what she told the others back in the Fright Zone - hell, no matter what she told _herself_ \- she wasn't exactly proud of that. There were no words to describe how she'd felt when she saw Adora, alive and well, at the Battle of Bright Moon. First had been shock, of course, followed by relief, overpowering relief. And then anger. Shame. Catra wasn't so cool and disaffected that it was easy for her to see a living, breathing reminder of what was probably her lowest point.

(_Your lowest point __**so far**__,_ a voice in her brain so helpfully piped up. This was war, no one's hands would stay clean for long. And those who had already dirtied theirs would only get dirtier.)

Just like there were no words to describe how she felt now, knowing that Adora had waited so long to give up on her.

Adora thought about saying something sarcastic, something groan-worthy like_ "Cat got your tongue?"_ but she just couldn't. She wasn't sure she'd be able to say anything at all without crying. It was one thing to know, deep down, that they were over. It was another to actually say it out loud, to acknowledge it. Saying it made it real. In a way, Adora supposed, this was all her own fault. She should've realized earlier that this wasn't something they could just work through. This wasn't something they could fight about, then go to bed, sleep on it, and wake up the next day and make up.

This wasn't just a lovers' spat. This was a freaking _war_.

And they were on opposite sides.

Catra leaving her to die was just the punctuation mark on a sentence that had already been written.

"So..." Adora finally said, swallowing the lump in her throat. She forced herself to her feet. "We did it. We had the talk."

"Yeah. Go, us," Catra said dryly, still staring at the ground.

Adora stood there for a moment, thinking over everything she _wanted_ to say - everything she knew she couldn't say.

_"It's not too late. Come with me. Join the Rebellion."_

_"I wish it didn't have to be like this."_

_"I'm always gonna love you."_

What she said instead was, "I'm just gonna go, okay? If I stick around, we'll just end up fighting, and... and I guess there's not much to fight about right now. We're done here."


End file.
